A Conversation with 'Maus' Creator Art Spiegelman

In 1973, Art Spiegelman published a three-page comic strip in a small underground publication called "Funny Animals." It was the first installment of what he called "Maus," the biography of Spiegelman's father, Vladek — a Holocaust survivor — with anthropomorphic mice standing in for Spiegelman, Vladek, and his fellow Jews. The complete graphic narrative was eventually published in two volumes. In 1992, nearly twenty years after he began work on the project, "Maus" was given a special award from the Pulitzer Prize Committee — to date, the only graphic novel honored by the Committee.

Last month, Pantheon Books released "MetaMaus:A Look Inside a Modern Classic." In it, Spiegelman details the creative process behind a masterpiece that is also a very personal story of a son's search for a way to make sense of his father's experiences.